Yellow Pulse
by AlienZombies
Summary: There is no time to stop here. Ellis hangs on for the ride. NICKXELLIS


This is a much more... I don't know. "Serious" fic than I'm used to writing. So please let me know what you think, positive or negative, I don't mind.

**Yellow Pulse**

"Do you figure there are any water-zombies?" Ellis asked, shattering the fragile silence that had held for the better part of an hour now. "I mean, not like, mud-men type zombies, but like… whale-zombies that come up under the boat and rip it all up to shreds. Like this one time, me and Keith was in this fishin' boat we made out of bits a' twigs, and this gator came up and broke the sucker straight in half with his tail. And Keith, that sonofabitch, he was all like –"

Rochelle moaned into her fists, swaying where she sat. For a minute, Ellis thought she might make it, because they'd all felt that way, that claustrophobic fear so strong you were sure you might faint – but then it got her, and she ran to the far end of the cabin to vomit into the tall metal trashcan in the corner. Nick lurched like he was going to go help her, but then seemed to think better of it.

As the smell of puke filled the cabin, Ellis started talking again to end the awkwardness. "I was just wonderin' if zombies can swim, is all."

"Ellis," Nick growled. When he was sure he had Ellis's full attention, his eyebrows shot up and he spoke slowly, coldly, "Shut the fuck up."

Ellis shut up, even though it hurt to be spoken to that way. Nick had always been gruff with him.

"Another thing to worry about," Coach muttered. "Goddamn water-zombies."

"Aww man, that would be so cool! But it'd be real bad, too. In a cool sorta way." Ellis chewed on his fingernail, a nervous tick he'd had since he was twelve. His nails never quite grew past the quick.

Rochelle heaved and here came a fresh wave of vomit. She gripped the edges of that trashcan like she would die without it. Her knuckles paled out. After a long, long minute she stood back up straight, cleared her throat, spat, and tottered back to the little bench beside Nick. She looked pallid and distant, her eyes glassy, and when she spoke her voice was unusually calm. "I get boat-sick easily."

"We've got nothing to worry about," Coach said in a distant sort of way. "We're in a boat in the middle of the river. Virgil's immune. We're okay. We just have to make it upriver and… and then we're home free."

They were all a little frightened, so Ellis tossed in a "Yeah!" for good measure. Just to amp up the optimism.

No one mentioned the long slog they had through New Orleans to get to the evac zone. That was an unspoken horror they weren't quite ready to steel themselves for.

The silence stretched. Nick propped open the window and had a smoke. His hands trembled a little. "Christ," he kept muttering. "Christ, Christ."

He probably didn't realize he was saying it. Their minds were all in a mad jumble. This sort of thing could shake a man – killing people like that, hanging onto the thin edge of life like that. Every little motion, every little sound made them all start and look around for infected, even now in the cramped cabin, on a boat in the middle of the river. Ellis sometimes wondered if it would ever get back to normal, but then he would remind himself that it would, it _had_ to. God was looking after the good people of the United States, was looking over Ellis and Nick and Rochelle and Coach and Virgil, was looking over Keith and Dave and Willard and Jeremiah back in Savannah, was looking over his Mama and his cousin Lilly. God was looking after them, and they were going to make it out all right, in one piece.

Some niggling part of Ellis's brain reminded him that Jeremiah had died in the truck wreck, and his Mama had been quarantined a week ago, and that the last time he had called up Lily she'd been having weird bleeding in her gums and vomiting and an erratic fever. And that Keith had… Keith had… But that was easily dismissed. With a tiny bit of effort, Ellis could brush those technicalities away and everything was breezy and good and clean. Even the little bloody parts.

"Ellis, honey, do you need some water?"

That was Rochelle. Ellis turned on his smile for her, which she readily returned, though she looked so very tired. There were brains smudged in her hair. He decided not to tell her.

"Naw, I'm fine," he said presently. "Why?"

"You're just kind of jittery."

"Shit. Really?"

"Really." She sounded amused.

Ellis probed himself for the answer, and found it to be true. His hands were mostly numb and his stomach was becoming queasy. "Well damn. I guess so. I thought I was just dizzy cause I was getting' boatsick."

Nick muttered something out the window, something like, "Of course you did, dipshit."

Ellis opened his mouth to respond, but was distracted by Coach shoving a water bottle in his hands.

"Drink up, boy."

"Thanks, Coach," Ellis muttered, humbled, and knocked back half the bottle. He hadn't felt so thirsty in a long time, even though the water was lukewarm by now and had Coach's backwash in it. He poured a little on his hands and rubbed them on his overalls, which didn't really help at all. When he was finished, he swept his hair back from his face with his somewhat-cooler palm and donned his cap again. "Thanks, man. That helped me out a lot."

Coach accepted the water back with a worn smile. "Any time, son."

The sun was starting to rise, and everyone was quiet again to watch the arc of life-giving light swing over the ridge of swampland trees. The sky let up in hot oranges, golds, and pinks, reflecting off of the rippling, glistening water, and Rochelle left the cabin to sit out on the loading deck. It was still cold out, but she hunched in on herself and didn't seem to mind. The hue of the air made her skin seem warm and alive, and Ellis smiled at the thought – that she was still alive, that they had made it so far already.

"Beautiful," Coach said appreciatively. "God works in strange ways. Goddamn zombie apocalypse, and still the sunrise is pretty."

Ellis grinned outright now, watching the sun rise with a passion attributed only to the young. The undersides of the clouds on the horizon turned purple – that was probably a storm coming up, but it wouldn't be upon them for another couple of hours.

Nick came up to the open doorframe and leaned against it. Ellis could only make out his profile, the colors in his second-hand smoke. It was beautiful, the way the sun caught in rainbows as he breathed out, the smoke rolling from his lips, chapped but wet. He seemed to be the kind of guy who used to use lip balm, before everything fell apart. His hair, once well-groomed, was in dark, messy tufts all around his head, streaked with gore.

The wind died down to a whisper as Nick breathed out, staring into something deeper than the sun and the sky, deeper than the swamps, into the very core of his future. His eyes were green, and presently they were hot, and glowing, sharply brilliant; Ellis didn't realize he was staring until Nick glanced at him and quirked an imperious eyebrow.

"What do you want?" he snapped.

"Nothin'," Ellis muttered, embarrassed. But he wasn't about to be pinned down so easily. "It's just that you're awful pretty, Nick, like a girl."

Nick seemed surprised and then briefly angry, but then he laughed. "Shit," he said appreciatively, taking another puff. His eyes had that hard, cruel sort of amusement in them. "You're something else, Overalls."

Coach stood up, pausing to get his balance, before he went outside to stand by Rochelle. For a minute, the bulk of his frame took up the entire doorway and blotted out the sun. Ellis sometimes tried to picture him young and couldn't.

The boat gently rocked. The water lapped lovingly at her sides. The only constant sound was the whirr and buzz of the insect life, the occasionally high "_ree-ree_" surprisingly close, a hopper or two. They were all so bitten up by mosquitoes it didn't much matter anymore how many more times they got bitten. Occasionally, there would be a scream from deep within the swamp, or a bellow, and everyone would get really uneasy at the sound.

"I'll be damned," Coach muttered at one point. "Look at this."

Out along the Western bank, where a settlement was set up on stilts, the zombies were clustered all along the riverside, feeding on the corpse of someone, a person – a woman, by the looks of her underwear. There wasn't much left of her. The zombies spotted the boat and rushed out into the river in a wave, but their feet slipped on the rocks and the current pushed them under. They didn't surface.

Rochelle made a small sound, like a cry, and put her face in her hands. Coach drew her up into a crushing hug that only made her cry more.

All at once, Nick and Ellis looked at each other. Probably Nick didn't realize it, but Ellis could see the spiraling panic building up behind his eyes.

"We'll make it out okay," Ellis whispered.

Nick went back into the cabin and pulled shut the door.

* * *

Ellis sat as close to the edge of the starboard side was he would allow himself, just watching the water foam up along the lip of the boat. Sometimes he dipped his fingertips in, but he was wary, because his mother had warned him about swamp water.

The sun hung around halfway between the pinnacle of the sky and the line of the horizon for what felt like ages. Its heat was pleasant but not intense, and so Ellis took off his hat to let his head absorb its warmth. Somehow it didn't quite feel like rescue when you were drifting slowly down a river. Or up a river. Ellis couldn't be sure and couldn't be assed to figure it out.

He had just begun to whistle a pleasant tune, counting zombies as he spotted them along the banks (he was up to 13, pretty good considering how many they'd mowed through already) when Nick approached him.

"Hey, Overalls," he said in a gentle kind of voice as he sat down beside him. He sighed and pushed a hand through his hair, but said nothing else.

"Nick," Ellis acknowledged, trying to stifle his usual enthusiasm because he knew Nick hated it.

"Rochelle says you've been sick lately." Nick said this without any intonation of worry. He struck up a cigarette and stared at the opposite bank with that same bored, cold look Ellis knew so well.

"I'm all right," Ellis lied, picking at his shoelaces. He'd started vomiting blood, and it was scaring everyone. But he felt fine, really – except for the stabbing pains in his gut, and the searing headaches, and the spontaneous fevers. Sometimes his hands would shake for no reason. But he didn't think it was the green flu, or any sort of flu. His Mama used to tell him that swamps were bad for diseases, and besides which, he had seen people this way before.

"One time," Ellis heard his mouth say, and he let it run off without him, "my buddy Keith's brother, his name was Dennis, got drunk and drove his car off a bridge. It's not funny at all, just real sad, cause he hit the water upside-down and the people at the hospital said, Keith said that they said that he just sorta flopped around for a while before he could drown proper, cause his windows were up and the water took forever to get into the car…"

Something changed in Nick's expression, just subtly. His eyebrows pitched upwards, and for a moment he almost looked concerned. But then he took a drag from his cigarette and he was cool again.

Ellis kept talking, couldn't stop himself talking. "Any anyway, I guess… Keith took it real hard, cause Dennis was his brother and all, and he got all shook up. I was scared for a bit cause I wasn't sure what he was goin' to do… He kept talkin' bout, what if Dennis was waitin' for him in heaven and whatever, and maybe he ought to jump offa the bank building. I told him not to, told him to hang on for me, cause I need Keith, I don't know… And anyway, he got better, but it was sorta like… And he was pukin' sometimes and would just start cryin' for no reason and his hands got all trembly-like, and he couldn't sleep ever, kept comin' over at like, 3:00 in the morning all indecent, and I had to… I needed to stay up with him cause I wasn't sure what he would do once I went to sleep, and I needed him there in the mornin', with me, cause… Cause what do you do? What… What's a sonofabitch to do?"

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Nick asked, and finally his voice was a pitch softer. "Ellis? Are you?"

"Naw, naw… I ain't…" But Ellis's voice clicked and betrayed him, and it was like a switch being flipped inside of him, because the tears started to burn his eyes in earnest. He smudged them away with his knuckle, trying to act casual, hoping Nick wouldn't notice the shine in his eyes, the way his mouth trembled sometimes when he was about to burst out sobbing – hoping Nick wouldn't hear the way his voice wavered on the edge of breaking.

But Nick noticed. He was trained to notice. "Oh, Ellis," he said tiredly, and sighed. "Christ, Ellis. Dammit."

Ellis put his face in his hands. "I'm all right," he insisted. "I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine."

"If you're about to have a goddamn breakdown on me…"

"I ain't, I ain't… I'll get on over it, I promise." But when he went to chew his fingernails, he couldn't get his hand to be still, and in the end he just bit his fingers to stop the low whine building up in him. The tears ran hot and slick down his cheeks, unobtrusive, running into his mouth a little bit with the taste of salt.

Nick touched his shoulder. "Hey."

"_Shit_!" Ellis exploded, banging his fist on the soggy wooden deck. He had torn his nail down to the quick and it was bleeding, but that wasn't what he was screaming for, and they both knew it. "God dammit!"

"Come here. Come here. Stop that." Nick grabbed his sleeve roughly, yanking him.

Ellis jerked in a breath, and it whooped through his chest as if he was suffocated, a deep baritone bark, and he realized he was sobbing. "Lemme go, let go of me." He shoved Nick back. "I'm all right!" But the words came out thick, and he couldn't quite seem to breathe.

"Don't go doing this, you can't do this to me," Nick said to him, and he sounded impatient, incredulous – downright insulted that Ellis would do this, and it was so… so _Nick_ that Ellis found himself smiling even around the tears. Nick kept talking. "Christ, Ellis, what the fuck would we do without you? Piece yourself together."

"I don't figure it would be so bad," Ellis said, wiping his nose with the back of his arm. "Is anytin' ever so bad?"

"Listen to you. Only you could be optimistic about offing yourself, for Christ's sake." Nick's eyes were sharp and hard. "Stop being so goddamn selfish."

"Sorry, I'm so sorry… I don't mean to worry you none, I'm sorry…"

"You'd better be. Don't scare me like that." Nick's cigarette had turned to ash. He flicked it overboard and lit a new one. He tried to hide it, but his own hands were shaking now. He had trouble lighting it. In the end, they both just gave up.

"I just miss him somethin' awful," Ellis croaked, because inside he knew what had happened. He knew.

Slowly, gently, Nick pulled Ellis to him, and held him close to his heart; Ellis listened to the steady rhythm, and it tugged him down into his first solid sleep in days.

* * *

He dreamed of oblivion. Death opened its greedy jaws like a gator, water rushing between the gaps of its stony teeth. Ellis stared down into its seductive, swirling depths, and was tempted, hearing the voices inside that he knew so well, the echoing cries from his memories. They called to him and pleaded with him. They were sweet but full of time, and patience, and they could wait for him. They could wait. The mouth of death gaped and gaped, a tunnel down into the blackness of the universe, but it wasn't for him, not yet. Ellis stared into it and understood.

And then he turned and walked away.

He walked away, up a grassy hill that spawned from nowhere and everywhere, and there he knelt down and prayed. And there was glorious light from the parted clouds, and Nick's warm hands sweeping over him, and the tender wind chased the breath from his lips like a kiss.

When he woke up, he was alone.

* * *

Nick came to check on him about five minutes after he woke, and his eyes were soft with what looked to Ellis to be relief. "Hey, Overalls. How are you feeling?"

"I'm dandy," Ellis said, and it was true.

"You had a fever. Did you know that, you dumb shit? Why didn't you say something?"

"Wasn't important. I was feelin' fine."

"Bullshit."

"I _was_." But Ellis submitted. His head throbbed with a low, steady ache. He smelled something wet and muddy, tinged with metal – rain? "Is it _rainin' _outside?"

"Looks like," Nick said, frowning. "It only just started. Rochelle and Coach are putting together the gunbag."

"Shit, man. I'm sorry."

Nick raised an eyebrow, but he didn't say anything. His contempt was written on his face.

"I'm feelin' kind of cold," Ellis said quietly, and Nick came closer.

"You probably still have a fever. We were hoping you'd sleep it off. Rochelle wouldn't stop hovering over you and so I had take over babysitting duty. And don't whine, you _are_ a big goddamn baby. Let me see." Nick smacked Ellis's hand aside and felt his forehead. His hands were cool and soft. Ellis let his eyes close as Nick muttered to himself and felt the underside of his chin to double-check. "Still burning up. This is no good."

"I'll be all right," Ellis murmured sleepily. A shiver wracked his body.

Nick looked him over thoughtfully, handing over his cap. "You'd better hope so."

Ellis turned the hat over and over in his hands. It reminded him strongly of Keith, who had bought it for him when Ellis had turned 21. They had returned home from partying around with the rest of their friends at 4:00 in the morning, and had fucked until sunrise. Keith had insisted Ellis wear his hat, and it was a goofy thing to demand, and it had made Ellis laugh and laugh.

"Hey, Nick," Ellis said quietly, looking up at last, and was surprised to see the pensive look on Nick's face. He had completely missed Ellis's intro, so lost in thought, so Ellis tried again. "Nick."

"What?" Nick's voice still had that hard edge to it. His eyes cleared.

Ellis turned on his most charming smile. "Did I ever tell you how I got this hat? Keith got it for me, and –"

"You know what? I'm fucking sick of your stupid stories."

When the door closed behind Nick, Ellis was still stunned into silence. He was completely blown away.

"Well, what the hell was that about?" Ellis wondered to himself, ignoring the heavy feeling in his stomach.

Ten minutes later, Rochelle poked her head in. "We're out of gas. Seriously. Virgil says there's a gas station by the dock that has some we can grab, and we can signal him with some flares in the… Ellis?"

"Sounds good to me," Ellis said. His gut was burning.

"Ellis, honey… Are you going to be all right?"

"Me? Of course."

"All right," she said, not sounding convinced. "What's the matter?"

"Nothin'. Nothin'."

The sun swung towards the horizon.

* * *

The rain had picked up a little and was coming down in hard, wet droplets by the time Virgil pulled up to the dock. Nick kept his distance from Ellis, and likewise Ellis kept to himself, mostly quiet. Everyone was so distracted by the tension, they hardly noticed Virgil leaving the dock again, or the clap of thunder deep into the distance.

"We should focus on the task at hand," Rochelle said quietly when Ellis swooned a little and Coach had to steady him. "The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can rest."

"How are we going to let Virgil know we got the gas?" Nick asked. He sounded grouchy. Probably because he realized that it was a bit late to be asking that question.

Ellis, on his own two feet again, spoke absent-mindedly as he donned his cap. "Oh, there's some flares in the gun bag."

"What gun bag?"

That question hit the air with the force of a canon ball. It hit the ground hard. Silence fell, and everyone fixed their eyes on Nick, whose eyes widened in confusion.

Ellis glowered at him and worked up his snottiest reply, still wounded. "You didn't grab the _gun bag_?"

Nick met his gaze and registered what it meant. He scowled. "Well, who the hell died and made _me_ keeper of the bag?"

"Pretty much everybody!" Ellis snapped.

"All right, all right, let's not have a catfight, now," Coach intoned, and this shut them both up quite efficiently. "How about we light the Burger Tank sign? Virgil's bound to notice that."

"That's a good plan," Rochelle said, grateful for the intervention. "Let's follow that plan. What do you think, boys?"

"What the fuck ever," Nick grumbled.

Ellis sniffed, picking up a baseball bat from the back seat of an abandoned truck. He led the way, swinging into zombie heads with much more vigor than usual.

Muttering, Nick took up the rear.

* * *

When the storm struck, Ellis nearly burst into tears. "My hat!" he was screaming over the squall, watching it get carried up into a monster of a tree. It was a ridiculous thing to get worked up over, and he knew it, but he couldn't help it. He was attached to the thing.

"I can't see a goddamn thing!" Nick was shouting. "Stay close!"

Ellis couldn't get much closer. He was plastered to Nick, partially out of necessity – because it was really bad, the storm – and partially because he needed that familiar comfort. After Rochelle had been brought down by a Witch, they were all nervous, and all they wanted now was to get back to the boat in one piece. Rochelle herself was unconscious, slung over Coach's shoulder like a slain deer. Sometimes a thin line of bloody drool would run from her mouth or nose like a viscous streamer.

This storm was the worst so far, and they were stranded in someone's front yard, hip-deep in greasy, dirty, bloody water. The wind slammed them so hard, they were nearly falling over with it. Ellis saw it first, the tree branch breaking loose; it whipped down and across Nick's face, sharp, and Nick was screaming over the shriek of the wind and the water.

"My eyes! Holy shit! My eyes, my eyes! I'm blind!"

"Lemme see!" Ellis shouted to be heard. "Come here! Lemme look at you!"

Coach shot something overhead as Ellis leaned down and grasped Nick's face, turning it this way and that. There was a streak of blood along the line of his eyebrow, leaking into his eyes, but when Ellis wiped it away, it was clear the branch had missed Nick's eyes – barely.

"All right?" Ellis asked. "Come on, now, we need you to see."

"Shit," Nick muttered, and laughed tiredly. "That scared me to hell and back."

The wind died down and the storm was gone as quickly as it had come.

"You okay, Overalls?" Nick asked presently, trying to stop the bleeding with his sleeve and failing.

"Better than you, I suspect," Ellis said, and then remembered he was angry with Nick, and glared at him. "Except I lost my hat in that bitch of a storm."

"You did." Nick blinked as if surprised. "Where did it go?"

"That big-ass tree over there." Ellis pointed. "Ain't no way I can reach it, though. Not with my leg."

"Goddamn motherfucking Witches," Nick threw in for good measure. He glanced down at Ellis's leg, which had been split like a seam down the front of his thigh. They had wrapped gauze around it like a tourniquet, but it wasn't doing much good in this infected water. "Well, you stay here. I guess I'll fetch it."

"You don't got to do that," Ellis said, but his voice sounded quiet to his own ears. "Goin' through that trouble for me…"

Nick looked at him, and it was almost a smile – no, it _was_ a smile – and he waded through the water to that offensive tree, from which Ellis's hat hung like a misshapen Christmas ornament. Coach and Ellis stood watching in astonishment as Nick got his foot up on a lower branch and started scaling the tree. In no time, he had retrieved Ellis's hat and was back down on the ground.

"Where'd you learn to do that? The goddamn Amazon?" Coach asked. Nick ignored him.

Ellis couldn't suppress a gleeful shout as Nick came closer, bearing his prize. "Yeah, buddy!"

"There you go," Nick said proudly, handing over the hat. "Don't be taking this as a favor, now. I expect just payment."

"Whoo, man!" Ellis exclaimed, delighted. He pulled his sopping cap tight over his head, beaming like an idiot. "You was like a regular goddamn Spiderman!"

"Thank you. I'll be here all week."

They grinned at each other stupidly, pleased that their petty argument was over with now. Ellis's chest swelled with a familiar sort of feeling, like he could laugh and cry and dance, and even though his body was heavy with pain and wetness, his insides felt like they were full of light. Nick's eyes shined and shined, and Ellis needed to distract himself. His mouth took off.

"Man, you have no idea how important this hat is to me. I had this for three years! It's my favorite hat… Love this hat. Thank you so much for gettin' this for me, man, you didn't have to do that for me or nothin' but you did, cause you're Nick… Aww, man. Man, I could kiss you."

Nick's eyes got huge and he smile faltered. "Uh," he said, as if he genuinely didn't know how to respond.

"Sorry, man, I'm just bein' excitable again… Damn! Thank you!" Ellis stroked his cap lovingly.

Coach spoke up before they had a chance to make each other more uncomfortable. "Now that you've gone and made everything all awkward, can we please go back to the boat?"

"Yes, please," Nick said, hoisting his shotgun over his shoulder. "Let's go."

Ellis hung close to him, sometimes brushing his hand, because he dared himself to whenever he got too nervous not to, and he wanted to. Nick kept looking at him, and his eyebrows would shoot up and his mouth would quirk like he was surprised but pleased to see him there – but he didn't comment, not once. Even one time, though Ellis wasn't sure if it was on purpose, those smooth, pale fingers brushed Ellis's own – just one time, and softly, but Nick's eyes had been fixed on him and they both knew it wasn't an accident at all.

They slogged on and on, and the water came down. The sun was gone.

* * *

Ellis's fever got worse and worse before it finally broke. He rode spiking waves of consciousness for hours. They kept a puke bucket handy for both him and Rochelle, who was in terrible shape. Coach tried to stitch her back up, but she needed some antibiotics at the very least, and some greater medicine that couldn't be provided on a rickety boat in the heart of Louisiana.

Before the end of it, Nick was constantly at Ellis's bedside; and likewise, Coach was always at Rochelle's. When Ellis woke screaming from a fever-dream, Nick was there with a cold rag and whispered reassurances – which was strange, because Nick was never optimistic. He always had his head on his shoulders, which balanced out Ellis's usual absent-mindedness. It was comforting and alarming all at once, to hear him speaking hopefully about something.

"We're almost there, okay? We're almost there. We get to New Orleans, and it's just a cakewalk to the evacuation center, okay? You've got to stay with me until then."

"I don't plan on goin' nowhere," Ellis said, but his voice gargled and bubbled and grinded, and Nick winced at the sound.

"I don't know how you and I ever got along," Nick murmured. "Nothing makes sense anymore."

"Cause God's lookin' over us, Nick. That's why."

"Oh, of course. Right. God. The same God who invented this goddamn Green Flu to begin with."

Ellis rolled over and heaved into the puke bucket. Nick laid a gentle hand on his leg to steady him, and that was all Ellis really needed.

* * *

"You've got to walk! I can't carry you! You're too goddamn big, okay?"

Ellis's knees hit the concrete, and his whole body followed after. He retched but came up empty, except for a thin dribble of mucusy blood. He struggled back to his feet, and the world spun around him in shades of gray and red, and he stumbled hard to the left; Nick grabbed his arm and steadied him.

"Ellis. El. Overalls, come on, man. Overalls… We haven't come this far just for you to knock off like this, all right? Get it the fuck together."

"I'm good to go, I'm perfect," Ellis muttered. His mouth was full of spit. The entire world rocked slowly left and right, like he was back on the boat. Nick was blurred and outlined in a beautiful halo of white, like an angel, like a cardboard cutout. "Nick…"

Another bomb rocked the far end of the bridge, and Ellis stumbled, knelt hard on the cement. He heaved in a breath and gave a low belch. A blood bubble swelled and burst on his lips, and for some reason this amused him. Nick was talking to him, but the sound was muffled, swallowed by the pounding in Ellis's ears.

"Come on, man, I can't carry you." Something in Nick's tone was frightening, and this was how it registered in Ellis's mind at last. It was panic, and more than that – it was something else, that nameless emotion Ellis knew too well, when the shit had hit the fan, and oh, God, if Ellis didn't pull through, if he couldn't get himself walking, that helplessness… Nick wouldn't be able to help him.

That's what it was. Nick's voice was choked with tears.

Ellis tried to talk, even though his jaw ached and his whole body was a throbbing, burning pillar of agony. "Nick, don't cry, now. I'd feel awful makin' you cry… Come on, man…"

"Stand up. Get up. Walk, please… Please, you've got to walk, Overalls, please…" His breath blasted Ellis's burning face. It was stale and bad, because they hadn't been able to brush their teeth or even shower in about a week. "I can help you, but you need to get up!"

With great effort, Ellis stood, and Nick cried out in relief.

Coach was already up ahead, carrying Rochelle, coming up on the chopper now. They had no time.

Somehow, through the foggy, black-and-white haze of near-death, Ellis stumbled forward. Nick kept a death grip in his upper arm, stopping him from falling flat on his face, and by the end he was nearly dragging him. Ellis wasn't aware of much but the pain of breathing, how his mouth hung open and each breath brought hot fluid back into his throat; how full his head felt, full to bursting; the comforting pressure of Nick's hand. And Nick never let go, not once.

The distance between them and the mouth of the bridge seemed insurmountably enormous, and yet they came upon it in minutes, in seconds, in milliseconds. They were flying, they were rockets. Everything to Ellis was a blaze of heat.

He slipped on the incline ramp into the helicopter, the smooth metal losing traction on his tennis shoes. He tripped up Nick, who staggered forward and finally fell. They lay there gasping, dragging each other up the ramp until they lay on the floor at last. For a minute, time stood still, and then the ramp began to close, and then was shut; another blast rocked them to their cores. The chopper lifted with an exhausted roar and Nick let out a strangled shriek of victory, cradling Ellis against him, not caring that they were lying on the floor, that Ellis was bleeding all over his suit, and Ellis was overwhelmed with gratitude, and the strange, delirious feelings of fever. The lines around him blurred and melded.

Nick, for no apparent reason, pushed back Ellis's cap until it hit the floor, and then ran his fingers through the shaggy, dirty mop of Ellis's hair. Ellis didn't mind losing his cap this time. Nick petted his hair again and again, his mouth working without sound. His fingers came back red.

"Hey," Ellis said, and Nick held his face and kissed it over and over, and for some reason Ellis couldn't feel it, didn't mind. And between those warm, full, watery kisses – salty, from tears, wet - Nick spoke in a voice Ellis had never heard from him before, low and sweet and full of an emotion too huge to name.

"What, Overalls? What is it? What? What?"

Ellis worked up the effort, for Nick's sake, because his eyes were watery and brilliantly green, and he seemed like he really needed to hear it.

Ellis spoke for Nick, even though it hurt. "Hey, guys… The chopper… it ain't made of chocolate," he gargled, and Coach laughed until tears were streaming down his ruddy cheeks.

Nick smiled and smiled and smiled, and held him as Ellis dipped slowly into the warm blackness of sleep, and then into something even deeper and blacker than that.

The sun reached the pinnacle of the blue, cloud-pocked atmosphere and stared down on them like an eye. And the fire burned down below, swept the city up in its hand and crushed it until there was nothing left but silence. It all stopped, then.

* * *

"Keith."

- ** the end**


End file.
